Results pending but 2 things clear: Biden vastly exceeded expectations, and Trump’s a big loser
The big question of whether voters have retired House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — and thus placed a giant roadblock on the Biden administration’s agenda — is still being answered. But this much is clear: The Big Red Wave? It never materialized.
Voters defied expectations, and history too, and showed up for Joe Biden’s Democratic Party to a frankly astonishing degree. To be clear, the GOP may still end up with victories in both chambers, and if they do it will represent a significant rebuke to the party and the president.
But the president’s party appears to have defied the odds, expectations and history, all of which were all in the Republicans’ corner. Rarely does a sitting president’s party avoid significant losses in both the upper and lower chambers, especially in the first term.
This year, with storm clouds gathering over the (still resilient) economy and inflation eating into Americans’ paychecks, all the smart money was on a big sweep by the GOP.
Thank goodness the smart money was wrong. So were many of the polls and political press, who had all but conceded a night of major victories for the GOP. Instead, voters dug in. There were some big wins on the Republican side — Ron DeSantis’ 20-point victory in his race for a second term as Florida governor among them. Greg Abbott of Texas easily won a third term in Texas.
But as of Wednesday morning, Herschel Walker of Georgia remained behind in a race still too close to call. Mehmet Oz lost to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, flipping a seat that had been Republican. The point here isn’t that Biden’s party has emerged victorious. For one thing, Americans could still be looking at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. We should know soon perhaps, or in races that remain extraordinarily tight, in the coming days.
But politics is always a game of expectations. And Democrats have emerged far stronger than nearly anyone was willing to predict even a week ago. Is that a win for Biden? Sure it is. His record of achievement is solid, even with a Congress so evenly divided.
Mostly, though, I’d like to think that voters rejected the poor candidates Rick Scott of Florida helped recruit — such a sloppy job that not even McConnell’s late intervention and hundreds of millions in PAC spending could fully heal.
That was an unforced error on the GOP’s part, and they are paying for it.
But is there reason for hope that voters also looked at the MAGA-driven wing of the GOP and decided they have had enough? That certainly is not the case everywhere — just look at Missouri’s results — but in enough places to throw a wet blanket of Donald Trump’s endorsements. The former president certainly emerges from the midterms weaker, especially given the hoopla surrounding his potential rival for the 2024 nomination, DeSantis.
I’ll be waiting for the results to trickle in today and perhaps over the next few days. But it’s not too soon to say Biden has emerged stronger than expected and Trump is looking increasingly tarnished.
In a game of expectations, that smells pretty close to victory.
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 9:30 AM.
